They would write legends about me.
But that would be the power of destruction.
I would not be able to save Raihn.
I opened my palm. The skin cracked and bled, charred by the power of the vial I clutched against it. Yet that ugliness only highlighted the incandescence of what sat within it, the blood a galaxy of colors against the darkest shadows of night.
It was so incredibly beautiful.
I blinked and a tear rolled down my cheek.
I wouldn’t lose one more thing. One more person. I couldn’t.
This blood could be used as a tool of destruction, yes. But how else could it be used?
Once I had cherished my dead father’s dirty wine glasses. I’d wrapped myself in his discarded clothing. If someone had offered me a piece of his hair, I’d have wept for it.
This blood was more than a weapon. It was a piece of someone who had once been loved. It was a bargaining chip, priceless to the one being who I knew would treasure it above all.
As Simon grunted and pushed himself to his hands and knees, I lifted my eyes to the sky. Beyond the winged bodies above, storm clouds swirled in unnatural wisps—like fish circling a pond, fragments of suspended lightning dancing between them.
I’d only seen the sky like that once before. When we had the attention of the gods.
I raised the vial above my head, as if offering it to the heavens.
“My Mother of the Ravenous Dark,” I screamed. “I call upon you, Goddess of Night, of Blood, of Shadow. I offer you the blood of your husband, Alarus. Hear me, my Goddess, Nyaxia.”
74
ORAYA
For a few long, terrible seconds, nothing happened.
The battle continued. Simon kept slowly pushing himself to his knees. Raihn kept dying.
More tears welled up in my eyes.
No. This had to work. It had to.
My arm shook as I held that vial to the sky, held it as high as I could, my eyes staring unblinking into the god-touched night above.
Please, I pleaded, silently. Please, Nyaxia. I know I’ve never been yours. Not really. But I’m begging you to hear me.
And then, as if she heard my silent prayer, there she was.
Time seemed to slow, the figures above moving in slow motion. The breeze through my hair grew cold, the strands suspended in midair. My skin pebbled, as if in the moments preceding a strike of lightning.
Just like last time, I felt her before I saw her. A staggering sensation of overwhelming adoration, and overwhelming smallness.
“What,” a low, melodic voice said, deadly as a drawn blade, “is happening here?”
There was only one thing, I realized in this moment, more terrifying than the presence of a god.
And that was the rage of one.
I slowly lowered my eyes.
Nyaxia floated before me.
She was just as beautiful, just as terrible, as I remembered her. Hers was the kind of beauty that made you want to prostrate yourself before her. Her hair floated in tendrils of ink-black night. Her bare feet hovered, delicately pointed, just above the ground. Her body, dipped in silver, gleamed and shone like moonlight in the darkness. Those eyes, revealing every shade of the night sky, were dark and stormy with utter fury.
The world itself felt that fury. Ceded to it. As if the air was desperate to please her, the stars moving to soothe her, the moon ready to bow to her.
Perhaps the fighting stopped, when Nyaxia appeared, soldiers on all sides shocked by what they were in the presence of. Or perhaps it just seemed that way, because everything else ceased to exist when she arrived.
Her shoulders rose and fell with heavy breaths. Her bloody lips contorted into a snarl.
“What,” she ground out, “is this atrocity?”
She spat the word, and with it, a burst of power shook the earth. I cringed, my body folding over Raihn’s as rocks and sand cascaded from the ruins. Wisps of stormy shadow surrounded her, leeching out into the air with the ominous darkness of tragedy.
Simon had managed to get himself up to his knees. He turned to her, bowing, blood spilling from his mouth as he spoke. “My Goddess—”
I didn’t even see Nyaxia move. One moment, she was before me, and the next, she was at Simon, hoisting him up with a single hand and ripping the pendant from his chest with the other.
It was so sudden, so brutal, that I let out a little gasp, my own body bracing tighter over Raihn’s.
Nyaxia let Simon’s corpse, limp and bleeding, fall to the ground without so much as a second glance.
Instead, she cradled the twisted creation of steel and teeth in her hands, staring down at it.
Her face was blank. But the sky grew darker, the air colder. I was shaking—whether with shivers or fear, or maybe both, I wasn’t sure. I still leaned over Raihn, and I couldn’t bring myself to stop, even though I knew it was pointless.